Red-Hot Summer Read: A Better View of Paradise, Part 1

Big-city landscape architect Stevie Pollack is a planner by nature, but when she heads back to her Hawaiian island home to take care of her ill father, she has no idea what will happen. And as she draws closer to a local vet with a mysterious past, she might finally learn to just go with the flow...

Home is far from Stevie's mind on the warm September morning that her new garden is scheduled to open. For one thing, she's a long way from Hawaii — in Chicago, a tough-guy city if ever there was one. And for another, she's all grown up. Thirty-six years old. A professional person, too — one who is, to be exact, making her mark upon the land. What's more, this person is determined not to let anything interfere with a day on which both she and the elaborate garden she has designed are going to be celebrated. Not even the fact that Brian just dumped her.

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Last night's crying jag has taken a toll on her eyes, and all Stevie can do about it is use drops to erase the red and hope to disguise dark circles and puffy lids with concealer and mascara. Not much of an improvement. Good thing the garden event is scheduled for outdoors; she can keep her sunglasses on the whole time.

The Chicago Tribune has branded her "a New York minimalist," but today she'll show them a little of her island-girl side — a taste of the small dot on the Pacific where she first came into consciousness. After showering, she steps into a vintage dress from a Honolulu resale shop, a sleek rayon cheongsam from the '40s that accentuates her tidy torso and skims her long legs at the calf. The pattern is floral, but not one of those fussy prints she can't stand, the kind that shrills: "I am a flower." This one says something bolder: "I know how to handle flowers — and you, too, probably."

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Considering the doubt that drives her, it's amazing how often such a performance succeeds. Especially with men. Until she needs something from them. Or that's how it seems this morning, as the memory of Brian's final words returns: "There's no comfort zone with you." How could he say such a thing after all she'd done for his pleasure, his happiness, not to mention his comfort? And not just in bed, either.

Untying a small velveteen bag, Stevie pulls out a pair of aventurine earrings and her least expensive but most treasured bracelet — a thin silver band engraved on the inside with her secret name. Her Hawaiian name. Makalani. Eyes of Heaven.

Stevie's garden is part of a new park built on the site of an old steel mill that once forged metal for Chicago's skyscrapers. Before competing for the commission to design it, she had come to Chicago only once, with Hank. It was long after the divorce, long after her mother had hauled her off to England. At 16, Stevie considered time alone with her father in his hometown precious, rare. Hotels were Hank's livelihood, and he had reserved rooms for them at the Drake, his idea of the best. After bratwurst and cream soda at Murphy's Bleachers, they yelled their throats raw from seats low on the first-base line while the Cubs won their first National League playoff game against the Padres.

When it comes to her father, the Chicago project has been Stevie's secret garden. She hasn't even mentioned it to him — all in keeping with her plan: Wait until the stress passes, give the garden time to mature, invite Hank for a Cubs game in May, and spring the surprise on him then.

As she enters the park, Stevie spots a copy of the Tribune, folded over someone's briefcase. Just as she snatches it up, she hears her name called out in desperation by Claudia, her assistant, who flew in days ago to oversee last-minute details. "It's the fountain," Claudia says. "The pump broke last night, and by the time it was fixed, all the grass got really wet. I tried to call, but —"

"Oh, God," Stevie groans.

"It would be okay if there weren't so many people," Claudia adds. "They're all over the place. It's unbelievable. I mean, their dogs are jumping into the fountain."

"Their dogs?" Stevie repeats dumbly. She is clutching the arts section of the newspaper, scanning the long article praising everything about the park. Everything, that is, but her garden. The most damning sentences jump off the page:

Stephanie Pollack's much-vaunted fountain says nothing so much as "Look at me."

The flowers and plants are all lined up like little soldiers in Pollack's service.

And, worst of all:

She doesn't know how to fit people — actual people — into her designs.

How could something so public turn into something so, well, personal, she thinks as she slips away from the crowd to survey the damage at the fountain. So many people are milling around that a swath of grass close to where the pump broke is already turning to mud. A muscular guy in a Sox T-shirt overthrows a Frisbee, and it lands in the fountain. As one of his teammates wades in after it, Stevie wants to shout, "No, you're not supposed to do that!" But she remains mute while he steps along the slippery granite bottom, loses his footing, and falls. All of which has captured the attention of a TV news crew that keeps shooting as the guy climbs out of the fountain with a skinned knee. This must be what happens when you don't know how to fit people into your designs. They get hurt.

At 70, Hank Pollack remains the sort of man people notice. Tan and fit-looking, with a prominent cleft chin, he has a full head of thick, wavy silver hair. He sometimes walks with a cane, but in the knife-pleated khakis and crisp chambray shirts he favors, he still has the vitality to appear dashing instead of weak. Still, charming as Hank can be, there is never anything the least bit warm or fuzzy about him.

What Hank is best at providing when Stevie's down is not praise or comfort but an infusion of his high-octane doggedness — the sort of stubborn, resilient stuff with which he battled back from polio, not letting his withered left leg keep him out of the ocean or off the golf course.

She knows her father isn't the one to soothe her wounds now. But once she's fled the park, he's the first one she calls, because what she needs now is an escape, an island. Her island — Kauai.

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"I've been trying to get you for two days," he says when he picks up. "Don't you check your messages?"

His testy tone sets off such a swell of emotion that her father might as well be the Tribune architecture critic. "Why don't you call me back later," Stevie tells Hank calmly, "when you're not angry?"

She clicks off, hefts her suitcase onto the bed, and starts flinging things inside as her cell phone chimes out the first notes of Beethoven's Ninth. "I'm not angry, honey," Hank says when she answers. "I'm upset. There's a difference."

Honey? Since when does Hank call her "honey"? On the line, she hears the once-familiar sound of Hank taking a drag on a cigarette. "Dad, why are you smoking?"

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"Why not? I'm going to die anyway. That's why I've been calling, to let you know. I want you to go over my will with my attorney, so you won't be confused about anything after I'm gone."

"Gone?" The Johnny's hot dog T-shirt she's been about to pack falls from her hand. "What's happened?"

"They found two tumors on my lungs."

Stevie sinks to the bed, arms wrapped tight around her middle as she rocks from the waist. "That doesn't mean you're dying. People live for years after getting diagnosed. There has to be a treatment."

He takes another drag. "I've already decided the treatment issue with my team."

"Aren't I on your team?" She pauses. "I can't let you do this alone."

"Oh, come on, Stevie. How long have you known me?" Hank is yelling now. "I refuse to be a burden. I am not one of those people who had a child so there'd be someone to take care of them when they got old."

"I am not a child, and you are not a burden. I'm coming out there."

"You're just being obstinate."

"I'm my father's daughter."

"If I say black, you say white."

"I love you too, Daddy." The words are unfamiliar, but they slip out easily. "I'll see you in the morning.

No other customer is in the Lihue airport Avis office as Stevie signs papers for an economy-class roller skate of a car. It is almost 11 p.m. Hawaiian time, but 4 in the morning by her body clock.

"Want me to mark your map?" the clerk asks. She wears a company-issued hibiscus-print blouse and has a fresh plumeria blossom clipped into her hair.

"Oh, I don't need a map," Stevie says.

"You must come here plenty, not to need a map at night."

"I used to, but it's been four years."

"Bet you're glad to be back."

"Not exactly," Stevie says. "My father's ill. Which car is mine?"

The clerk steps out from behind the counter and startles Stevie with a hug. "Welcome home," she says.

Stevie napped only fitfully for an hour or two on her flight, but once in her car, breathing this tender air again is so stirring that she stays alert for the whole drive.

The lone outward sign that Hank's house gives of expecting Stevie is a floodlight left on. She slips inside, sets her suitcase down and steps soundlessly over bamboo floors into the high-ceilinged center of the house. Turning a lamp on low, she goes to the closet to pull out her great-grandmother's quilt, a splash of stylized green-and-gold pineapples on a field of creamy silk. Stevie carries the quilt out to the futon on the lanai and, within minutes of crawling underneath it, falls into a thick, heavy sleep.

At 3 a.m., Stevie bolts upright on the futon. Her father is calling her name from the front lawn. "Stevie! Where are you?"

"I'm coming," she shouts, then jumps out of bed and runs barefoot down the steps to hover over Hank, who lies on the ground. His silk kimono has come untied over his pajama bottoms. The ankle of his good leg is bruised and swollen. The arm that must have broken his fall is bloody. A half-smoked cigarette smolders on the bottom step.

"Help me up," he commands. "Just get me to the stairs — I can stand from there."

"Put your arms around my neck." Hank has lost an astonishing amount of weight since the last time she saw him, so she should be able to lift him. "Hold tight," Stevie says. She bends, takes a deep breath, and strains to bring Hank up with her on the exhale. But hard as he tries, strong as she is, she can't get him to his feet.

"This isn't going to work," she says, dropping to her knees. "I'll call the medics."

"No!" Hank bellows. "You have to call the goddamn hospice people."

"Hospice?" A gut-punch of a word. Only people who aren't being treated qualify for hospice care. "I don't care what you say," Stevie says. "I'm calling for help."

"Call Lila. She'll know what to do."

At last, something that makes sense. Lila's a nurse. "Oh, my girl," Lila breathes into the phone after hearing what happened. "Such a lucky thing you were there."

Once she arrives, Lila takes charge with soothing efficiency. Using the pineapple quilt to maneuver Hank up to a sitting position, she turns her honey-hued face to Stevie. "Run get the oxygen tank."

Sure enough, there's a small metal canister by Hank's bed. Lila hooks the breathing apparatus over his ears, turns a knob, and as Hank's inhalations extend, then strengthen, she speaks to him sweetly. "You're a stubborn old man, aren't you?"

Lila to the rescue, again. The last time she and Stevie were together was back in New York, almost a year ago. Lila had flown out to nurse Stevie through the aftermath of a tubular pregnancy that took her right ovary and fallopian tube. It was the beginning of the end with Brian. "He should be here taking care of you," Lila had said at the time. Stevie rushed to his defense.

"Don't be so hard on him, Lila. When I went to the hospital, it was an emergency. We didn't even know I was pregnant. Besides, you're forgetting everything he's done for us — the food, the movies, the books."

It wasn't so long ago that sleeping straight through the night was something Japhy Hungerford took for granted. Alana used to say that he slept so well it was a shame he couldn't be paid to do it. Now it takes nothing at all to wake him in the middle of the night, and always at 3:30 in the morning. This time it's a motorcycle gearing down to turn on the grass drive that runs past his house. At the foot of his bed, Rainier raises her big, black head with a soft, perfunctory woof.

Japhy considers getting up to take a couple of Benadryl, the strongest sleep aid he'll allow himself since weaning off the prescription stuff. But then he'd be sleepy still for his early-morning Sunday trip to Hanalei, on the opposite side of the island. That, on top of his hangover, would be awful. Strange, feeling this way from only two drinks. Christine, his office manager, must have gone overboard with the mango mojitos, just like she did in deciding to throw a surprise party in his honor.

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Japhy had hoped his birthday would go unnoticed this year, that he wouldn't have to be cheerful about it for other people's sake, but when he got home from the beach, there everybody was, lying in wait. Everybody had included Sharon, a woman whose cat he'd treated for a respiratory virus. She was also Christine's yoga instructor, and had clearly been invited for Japhy.

"We have so much in common," Sharon had insisted after gluing herself to his side. "We're both taking the path of healers."

"Christine says you're a great teacher."

"It's not just yoga," Sharon cooed. "I have a doctorate in healthology."

A doctorate in healthology? Who knew such a thing even existed? "That's great" was all he could think to tell her.

"I would like to worship you with my body," Sharon informed him.

"As opposed to your mind?" When she looked hurt by this crack, Japhy hastened to add, "No, really — I'm flattered." Which happened to be true. He was tempted too. But while he found it exciting to imagine what amazing muscular feats Sharon might be moved to perform in the throes of passion, it was also a bit frightening.

When the motorcycle passes by again, Japhy surrenders to wakefulness, getting up to shower, shave, and start the coffee. After drinking half a cup, he loads the bed of his white Ford pickup with bags of party trash. At the exact hour and minute that he breathed his very first breath, he decides to resurrect an old birthday habit and call his mother in Seattle.

"Hello, dear," Kate says, answering with a froggy voice on the first ring.

"This would be your number-one son."

"No kidding. Who else would have the nerve to phone at eight-oh-twelve on this fine Sunday morning?"

"Happy birthday, Mom," he says. "Thanks for having me."

"Oh, happy birthday yourself! Listen — before I forget. We need a plan for the holidays. It's nearly a year since you left, and we miss you."

"Holidays are tough, Mom. And it's hard on everyone else, having me around."

"How can you say such a thing, honey? Everyone loves you so much."

"I wish that made it easier."

A long sigh on the other end of the line. "And I wish I could shut my big mouth and have faith that you're putting a good life together for yourself. I'm afraid you're living out there like some kind of hermit."

"You had a party?" Kate perks up. "How wonderful! You need friends — people who know what you've been through."

"I had that in Seattle. After a certain point, it's not all that helpful." As the old agony creeps over him again, Japhy regrets making this call. He takes a slow breath. "This is the right way for me to go.

Before returning to bed, Stevie had brought a clock radio out to the lanai. At 7:30 she's jolted into consciousness by a loud, twangy, raucous song that seems to be all in favor of humans consuming dog food — fricasseed or deep-fried.

Gentle, melodic Hawaiian music — that's what Stevie remembered this station playing on Sunday mornings. And that's what she'd expected when she set the radio to go off, not this silly hillbilly stuff. The song gives way to some guy speaking with a low, lazy voice. "You're tuned to listener-supported KKCR," he rumbles. "If you just joined us, this is the Paradise for Pets program, and I'm a vet here on the island, ready to take your calls...."

Stevie slaps off the radio. Lila gave her enough detailed information last night about Hank's condition that she's confident her father will indeed awaken this morning, but not soon. Ten a.m. at the earliest, by which time the Cubs game, in Milwaukee, will be under way. Stevie changes into running clothes and takes a cup of coffee outside to drink straight up.

An itinerant hen, wings flapping, comes squawking across the yard, herding five chicks to hide under the red oleander beside the carport. Close behind comes a sturdy-looking little dog whose chest hits the grass in a play bow, its tail a comic dervish. "What do you think you're after?" Stevie says.

The creature cocks its head, shakes it hard, paws at a floppy ear, and bounces over to stand at Stevie's feet. She stoops down to assess: saucer eyes, bearded muzzle — a border terrier mix. He doesn't wear a collar or tags. Opening his mouth with a finger, Stevie sees a few gummy gaps where adult teeth are beginning to push through; the rest are all sharp and tiny. Definitely a puppy. As he scampers a few feet away to bat a kukui nut between his paws, Stevie laughs. "Aren't you a pip?" Pip — the perfect name for him.

I should keep him for Hank, Stevie thinks. Then her sensible self comes butting in. Who will take him after Hank dies? You'll be too overwhelmed, even more of a mess than you are now. Do the right thing. She fetches the phone.

"Hi, Stephanie," the radio vet says when he comes on the line. "I understand you have a lost terrier-mix puppy in Koloa."

"Well," Stevie says, "I don't think he's lost. I think he's abandoned." She hopes nobody else caught the break in her voice. "He's so well-behaved — I didn't think he was a puppy until I looked at his teeth. I'd keep him if I could." She takes a raspy breath, unable to hide the ridiculous fact that she's crying. "I just feel so bad for him. And now I'm abandoning him too." She laughs at how pitiful that sounds, but the laugh comes out more like a honking snort. "He's going to have trust issues, don't you think?"

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That gets the chuckle that she wanted. "He's lucky someone like you found him. I'd say it's time to be practical."

"That's why I called," Stevie declares. "I have to be practical." The pup scrambles onto her lap, shakes his head, and paws at his ear. When she reaches to lift the flap and see what's bothering him, he trembles and emits a shrill yelp.

"Probably an infection. The Humane Society shelter is where you want to take him. They'll treat the ear, give him his shots, and if you're right about his being abandoned, they'll put him up for adoption."

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"But what if nobody wants him? They won't kill him, will they?"

"No worries, Stephanie. Puppies find new homes in no time at all. Don't let this wreck your vacation."

Of course he thinks she's a tourist. She reeks of mainland neuroses. "Who said I was on vacation?"

"Well, I just assumed," the radio vet says. "We're running out of time, Stephanie. But if I found a puppy I couldn't keep, the shelter is where I'd take him.

When Stevie walks into the shelter, the ponytailed young woman who's working the front desk calls out to someone in the corridor behind her, "She's here. You owe me." Then, eyes fixed on the puppy in Stevie's arms: "We bet on whether you'd bring him in. How ya doin', Mr. Handsome?"

"You heard me on the radio?"

"Yep." The woman scratches under the puppy's muzzle. "Some upset-sounding dude called here right after the show. Wouldn't give his name, but from what I could make out, he left this puppy in a box at Dr. Japhy's place. Must have been a pretty flimsy box, yeah? Oh, and he said he left a note there, too, about how the pup answers to 'Laki.'"

"He answers to 'Pip' too," Stevie says. "Who's Dr. Japhy?"

A dark-haired haole guy wearing board shorts and a close-fitting cobalt-colored T-shirt walks in, a large black dog beside him. This must be the irresponsible jerk who dumped Pip, Stevie guesses. "Hey," the man says. "Would've been here sooner, but there was a backup on the bridge."

Then he turns to Stevie, reaching for Pip with a tight-lipped grin that dots the parentheses around his mouth with deep dimples. Well, his brand of charm isn't going to work — not on her, not today. "Even if you didn't try to get rid of this puppy once already," Stevie says, "being negligent enough to let him have an ear infection disqualifies you from dog ownership."

The woman behind the counter hoots.

"What?" Stevie doesn't get the joke.

"Remind me what your name is, I'll introduce you to Dr. Japhy." Stevie's not so much embarrassed as surprised; if he's the vet, he's got to be older than he looks. "I'm Stevie Pollack," she tells him.

"Japhy Hungerford." He holds out his hand for the puppy to sniff. "I wondered if you'd be here."

Now she can hear that timbre from the radio in his voice. "Sorry," she says. "I just didn't expect you to be, well, you."

"I volunteer here on Sundays. Why don't we go to the examining room? I'll check him out. And this is Rainier," he says by way of introduction to the dog by his feet.

He runs his long, narrow hands over flanks and belly while looking off into space, creating enough rapport that Pip melts into a submissive trance, offering up his ear with barely a whimper. "Well, no wonder," the vet says, then reaches into a drawer for a pair of long-nosed forceps.

Stevie realizes she's holding her breath — not out of anxiety, but because she's mesmerized by the dark hair on the vet's arms. She can remember, when she first saw him, thinking he was attractive in a general way. But one look at his arms, and it's like she fell down a mine shaft.

Another soft whimper from Pip and the forceps emerge from his ear, grasping a small pod with sticky-looking, arrow-quill serrations. "Grass seed," the vet says. "Lucky we got it early. They eventually migrate into the ear canal. When they puncture the ear drum, you've got major trouble."

Stevie nods, staring at the grass seed, but doing this keeps the vet's arms in view, sends the belly-swarming butterflies swooping down to her pelvis, so she forces her gaze to the wall, where there's a chart of Hawaiian names suitable for pets. Aka means laughter. Ola means alive. And Laki means lucky. An apt name for this puppy, though not enough to make her forget about Pip. Now she's sensible enough to speak.

After Pip's vaccinated and bathed, Stevie writes a check, making a generous donation in addition to the shelter's fees, then heads back to Koloa equipped with kibble, leash, collar, and a small crate.

Hank has managed in her absence to shower, shave, and dress in the tropical version of his usual uniform — short-sleeved chambray shirt and pressed khaki shorts. He's on the lanai with his coffee; his bruised leg, which Stevie had rubbed with menthol cream and wrapped in a heating pad, rests atop an ottoman.

"The game, Stevie," he says now. "What about the game?"

She brings their breakfast drinks, flips the TV onto the Cubs game, then goes to the carport for Pip, who's curled into a ball on her sweatshirt inside the crate. She lets him out to pee, then carries him and the crate to the lanai. "You probably won't like him, Dad," she says. "But this is Pip. I thought he might run the bases with you."

"Very funny." Hank's grin is broad. Stevie puts Pip on the floor, holds a piece of kibble above his nose, and as the puppy walks across the lanai to Hank on his hind legs, Randall Simon belts a three-run homer, putting the Cubs ahead by five.

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Hank lifts Pip onto the ottoman and needs only three pieces of kibble to teach him to shake. "He's smart," Hank says.

"Anything I can get you?" Stevie asks while she crates the puppy.

"Iced tea?" As she heads for the kitchen, Hank has one more request. "Why don't you leave Pip here with me?"

Even with Hank's Stone Age dial-up connection, Stevie's email program has plenty of time to retrieve messages the next day while she does lunch dishes, wipes down counters, damp-mops the floors, starts a small load of laundry in the utility room, and takes a shower. Wet hair wrapped in a towel, she pads barefoot to her computer. Ten new emails, one from Brian.Hey, babe.

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Sorry about Chicago. It's the kind of thing that gets worse before it gets better. Like us? Maybe. I don't know.

Where the hell are you?

Stevie suspects that if she hadn't been blasted for her garden design, he wouldn't have written at all. She knows exactly how to respond to him:

I'm in my comfort zone.

Nearly a week passes, and not once does Stevie set foot on a beach, not once does she step into the ocean. The sea is the reward she has promised herself for handling Hank and charging through a myriad of tasks, including installing a flat-screen TV and satellite hookup. Perfect reception sailed out over the Pacific into the lanai, where Stevie and her father watched the Cubs drop two games to Montreal.

Now, finally, Stevie has forced herself to shift into a problem-solving mind-set for her poor, maligned garden.

No doubt about it, what she's got on her hands is a public design calamity. Stevie's fountain now resembles a crime scene, drained and cordoned off with yellow caution tape. Claudia emailed photos, and painful as it is to look at them, Stevie knows these measures had to be taken. Otherwise, people would have kept climbing into the fountain and falling down. Stevie's under the gun to devise a plan to make the fountain's granite surfaces less slippery.

She's exhausted — not her body, but her short-circuiting brain. It's time to claim her reward. She goes outside and opens the carport utility closet to pull out first a silver-trimmed trail bike, then a snorkel, mask, and fins, all of which she stuffs into a yellow canvas backpack. The next layer includes bottled water, bike lock, a tube of the sunscreen now coating her body, cell phone, wallet, Pip's blue retractable leash, a Baggie filled with kibble, and a collapsible bowl. Stevie shoulders the backpack, lifts Pip into the cushioned bike basket, and rides off makai, toward the sea.

At the end of Ainako Street, she locks the bike to a banana tree and walks across Shipwreck Beach with Pip in tow. Alone on these limestone cliffs, Stevie feels as if she's in her own private nature preserve.

After a mile, when Pip wearies, she carries him to where the trail ends at Mahaulepu's first pristine stretch of golden sand. She strips down to her bikini, unpacks her snorkeling gear, and leaves Pip beneath a low-hanging bough, gnawing on a chew toy.

In the distance, she sees a windsurfer — a tall man with dark hair and sure balance. Is it Japhy? She's been dodging him all week. As someone trained by both parents to leave the islands in order to excel, Stevie has built-in disdain for a guy her age who'd throw in the towel to live here full-time. She squints, observing the ease of his maneuvers. It makes her want to get in the water.

Splashing into the warming crystalline waves, she shrieks from the sheer joy of it. Then she's on her way, fins fluttering, hands glued to her sides so as not to disturb the glorious tapestry of grazing fish below. She crosses the boundary into bliss when a sea turtle washes over the reef and swims alongside her, its dark eyes at once curious and shy. This is the omen she had come here for: Island honu are symbols of longevity — the very thing she's trying to conjure for Hank.

Swimming back toward shore, Stevie is startled by something. A pair of somethings, actually: two churning objects she catches with peripheral vision as they whiz toward her.

Dog legs, that's all they are — furry dog-paddling dog legs. And Stevie doesn't need to read a collar tag to know whose dog this is. Treading water, she pushes back her mask and pats Rainier's dignified, furrowed head, then breaststrokes over to a shallow spot, where she perches on a grooved slab of lithified sand, grabs a driftwood stick, and hurls it for the dog. Stevie searches the beach for Japhy. Buoyant and unguarded after her swim, she can hardly remember now why she'd wanted to avoid him.

Stevie leans down to remove her fins while Rainier swims out to retrieve the stick. It's in the next moments, keeping her balance barefoot on the rock even as breaking waves slap at her knees, that it hits Stevie. The solution for people falling down in her fountain is at her feet — literally. If a stonemason cuts grooves in the fountain's slick granite to mimic the channeled rock of lithified sand she's standing on, nobody could climb in and fall down.

Rainier paddles back, and Stevie falls on her neck with kisses. "Oh, good doggie good doggie good doggie, oh, thank you thank you thank you." As Rainier bounds off to join Pip, Stevie follows.

From a distance, Japhy calls out a hello that brings both dogs barreling toward the surf. Stevie runs to catch Pip before he's caught in a wave, but Japhy beats her to it, and as he hands the puppy over, their fingers touch. Stevie's heart flops in her chest.

She nods toward the ocean as they walk ashore. "Kind of slow out there today."

"I don't mind going slow," he says.

"In general, or just in the water?"

"Both. What are you up to?"

"Nothing much. Snorkeling."

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"Yeah?" He smiles. "What did you see?"

"Lots. Everything from the honu I swam with to your dog."

It doesn't matter that the wind and water have slapped the hair on Japhy's head into an absurd-looking Sno-Kone formation; she's still in trouble. Even his dimples strike her as enticing now. When Japhy says, "I'm starving," Stevie takes a long, deep, nerve-gathering breath and tries to summon a casual tone. "How do you feel about saimin?" she asks.

"At Hamura's?"

"Where else?"

Her stomach rumbles at the thought. It's just lunch, she tells herself. Japhy will have to put a shirt on — that will help. And if he disdains chopsticks or says disparaging things about his ex, all the better.

Leaving the dogs leashed outside with kibble and water, Stevie and Japhy enter Hamura's through a screen door that thwacks behind them. The counter's built low to the floor for people much shorter than Japhy, whose knees fit underneath only if he splays them, putting the left one into a relationship with Stevie's right thigh that is alarmingly thrilling.

Stevie imagines how miserable Brian would be if she'd insisted on bringing him to Hamura's. He never went for hole-in-the-wall places. He'd hate the plastic water glasses, cheap plates, canned soft drinks.

Japhy declines the offered menu, as does Stevie. When she says, "I'll have the special and a Diet Coke, please," he echoes her order and adds chicken skewers to share.

"You're a Mariners fan," Stevie says, gesturing at his baseball cap. Japhy hands it over for inspection.

"No adjustable band, see?" he says. "Custom made for Dan Wilson."

"The Dan Wilson?"

"Uh-huh. We have the same size head."

Stevie reaches up to put the cap on him backward, the way a catcher like Wilson wears it behind the plate. Japhy's thick hair is smashed flat on top now, and she can feel its saltwater stickiness, see how it's dried into distressingly endearing waves above his neck, behind his ears. "How'd you figure that out?" she asks. "Are you a groupie?"

"I took care of his dog back in Seattle. After I mentioned how I'd always wanted a genuine Major League player's cap, Dan had me try on one of his, and it was a perfect fit. So yeah, I'm a fan. I love baseball. I don't get when people say it's boring."

Stevie notices that Japhy's eyes change color like a chameleon. "Anybody who says baseball is boring ought to watch a game with my father," she says.

"Wouldn't mind doing that myself." He takes a long drink of water.

"Glad you were free today."

"Me too," she says, feeling her face redden. "I like being spontaneous — I'm just usually too scheduled."

"My life in Seattle was like that."

"Is that why you left?"

"No." He slips his chopsticks out of their paper wrap and snaps them apart. "How long do you plan to stay, this trip?"

So he doesn't want to discuss why he moved here. Fine, she'll keep things light. "Not sure. Until it's time to leave." Mentally, she gives Japhy points for the chopsticks, for how he ordered. But she also jots down her first official entry on his deficit list: come-here-go-away behavior.

"More of a bohemian, really. But Alana used to say Mom defies description."

"Alana?"

"She was my wife," Japhy says, his voice curt. He picks up one of the chicken skewers, then replaces it without taking a bite. "I don't want to talk about her," he says. Then, his tone lighter, "It's great how your father's taken a shine to Pip."

It's like they're playing poker. No sooner does Japhy lay a personal card on the table than he freaks and covers it with the puppy. Okay, she'll play. "Dad was the main reason I wanted Pip," Stevie says.

Instead of waiting to see what he'll do — pick up or draw another — Stevie's compelled to set an example by flipping out even more personal cards. She describes one of her life-prolonging strategies for Hank: the satellite TV dish that means he won't miss a single Cubs game. Then she babbles on about the problem with her fountain, and how she owes the solution for it to Rainier.

When the waitress slaps down their check, Stevie grabs it and pulls her wallet out of the knapsack to pay. Japhy reaches for his own wallet and holds out a handful of bills. She waves them away, saying, "No, this was my idea."

"That's cool," Japhy says. "But I get it next time." Maybe he's just being polite. Maybe there won't be a next time. A rebound affair with yet another divorced, messed-up man — that's what Stevie's early-warning system is alerting her against. It's no use, though, because she's already wondering when next time might be.